Focus Like a Flower

To understand the value of life, human beings need the determination of a sunflower tracking the sun, says Prem Rawat, known around the world by the honorary title of Maharaji.

"A sunflower does not have a global positioning system, maps, or instruments," he says. "Yet at night it somehow turns around to be ready for the sunrise the next day. Even if the weather is cloudy, it faces in the right direction. Clouds won’t stop that sunflower, because ultimately it isn't the clouds that are permanent. It's their relationship to the sun that's permanent. Whether those rays are visible or not, there is a connection."

The daily trials and triumphs people get caught up in, Maharaji says, are like clouds to that flower––temporary. He suggests instead a greater focus on something more permanent: the feeling of being alive.

"People need to understand the importance of their relationship with existence," he says. "Then and only then can we begin to understand the value of being able to go within to feel the peace that's inside."

Maharaji began speaking publicly before he started the first grade about the need for individuals to feel peace within. In response to invitations, he took his message to the West at the age of 13. Since then, he has talked about personal fulfillment to more than 10 million people in 97 nations. He emphasizes that he doesn't just talk, but can show people a way to experience inner contentment.

"That is what I give to people who want it," Maharaji says. "We need to know what we have, because the path to peace within begins with opening our eyes and seeing things as they are, not how they could or should be."

Completion

"If a painting is not complete, its true expression will never come to bear. A symphony, if it is not complete, will not express what the musician wanted to express," says Prem Rawat, who is known in many countries as Maharaji. "Here's a very simple question—what makes a human being complete?"

Maharaji has been talking about the universal human need for completion, for fulfillment, all his life. Since his early teens he's devoted most of each year to speaking to large audiences around the world about the possibility of satisfying that need, and offering his help in doing so.
"Fulfillment is not a joke," he says. "Look around in this vast world. That's what people are trying to find. For centuries, some people had a dream of flying. Now that dream has been fulfilled, and it's getting to the point where the skies are getting too crowded.

"There's one dream that goes much further than the dream of flight. That is the dream of having peace on the face of this earth." The peace that Maharaji talks about is not something brought about by treaty, he says, but a feeling within every human heart. It's the dream of "those who have studied the passion of the heart and come to the conclusion that peace is necessary in their lives because they want to be complete, not incomplete. They want to accept the gift of being alive in its entirety, not in little bits and pieces."

The need for peace, he says, "needs acknowledgment—and most importantly, it needs to be fulfilled. We need to turn within ourselves to find peace. Because until this dream is fulfilled, it doesn't matter what else happens: Something will not be complete."